Hoodies on the Floor

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-79
Author(s):  
Matthew B. Platt
Keyword(s):  
Police Brutality ◽  
Black Representation ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Bill Sponsorship ◽  
History Of

This paper examines how black members of Congress (MCs) have recognized police brutality as an issue on the congressional agenda from 1973 to 2016. Using a dataset of every bill introduced by black members of Congress during the period of study, I show that, in general, police brutality has not been an important component of black MCs’ legislative portfolios. Instead, it is an occasional focus of bill sponsorship in response to discrete, highly salient incidents of brutality and murder. These findings are contextualized through a broader discussion of black representation as a tactic for black liberation and the similarities between the history of anti-lynching legislation and the contemporary fight against police brutality.

Small Axe and the big tree of 2020

Soundings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (77) ◽  
pp. 9-22
Author(s):  
Roshi Naidoo
Keyword(s):  
Prime Time ◽  
Black Representation ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
Slow Progress

This article reflects on Steve McQueen's Small Axe series, exploring its importance in placing black narratives at the centre of history and on prime time television. It locates it within the context of a longer history of struggles over black representation and misrepresentation in mainstream British media. Naidoo draws on her own experiences to discuss the very slow progress towards diversity in the cultural life of Britain. She pays tribute to pioneers who campaigned for a more representative media in Britain. What made these films especially important was the space given to pleasure, presence and collective joy.

Trouble in My Way

2019 ◽  
pp. 133-160
Author(s):  
Jelani M. Favors
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
University President ◽  
State University ◽  
Campus Environment ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Jackson State University ◽  
History Of

This chapter examines the strained history of Jackson State University during the aftermath of World War II and leading up to the modern civil rights movement. Located in the heart of Mississippi, Jackson State students carved out space to express their militancy as the war came to a close. However, they quickly felt that space collapse around them as segregationists tightened their grip on the Magnolia State as the burgeoning movement for black liberation challenged the oppressive traditions of the most socially and politically closed state in the country. Administrators such as Jackson State University president Jacob Reddix quickly fell in line with the expectations of his immediate supervisors and squared off against outspoken scholar-activists such as famed poet and novelist Margaret Walker. The standoff resulted in a campus environment fraught with tension yet still producing students and faculty determined to undermine Jim Crow.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Adam Malka
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Police Brutality ◽  
Police Power ◽  
Black Freedom ◽  
American Liberalism ◽  
History Of

The opening chapter introduces the broader story that the next seven chapters will tell, and makes clear that this is a study of policing which culminates in the mass black incarceration of late 1860s Baltimore. The book has two primary arguments: first, that Baltimore’s police institutions were from the onset shaped by a liberal order that assumed criminality as the essence of black freedom; and second, that the criminalization of black freedom in turn encouraged white police power. The introduction also defines three concepts central to these arguments – police, property, and manhood – while situating the book in existing historiography, especially that of 19th century criminal justice and American liberalism. Finally, it suggests that this history of the nineteenth-century is an antecedent to today’s stories of racialized police brutality and mass black incarceration.

scholarly journals The Origins of Bearing Witness While Black

2020 ◽  
pp. 23-44
Author(s):  
Allissa V. Richardson
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Slave Narratives ◽  
Domestic Terrorism ◽  
Police Brutality ◽  
Central Component ◽  
Bearing Witness ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Advocacy Journalism

Chapter 2 traces the genealogy of black witnesses through three overlapping eras of domestic terrorism against African Americans: slavery, lynching, and police brutality. Black storytellers in each of these timeframes leveraged the technologies of their day to produce emancipatory news. In this manner, advocacy journalism has remained a central component of black liberation for more than 200 years—from slave narratives to smartphones.

Papa

Race & Class ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 030639682110109
Author(s):  
Brenda Burgo
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Black Men ◽  
Black People ◽  
Personal Narrative ◽  
Police Department ◽  
Police Brutality ◽  
Severe Injuries ◽  
Systemic Racism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Permanent Brain Damage

In this personal narrative, the author details her grandfather’s and father’s experiences of police brutality in Los Angeles, a pattern that continues from one generation to another. She shows the long legacy of violence and racism that Black men face at the hands of the Los Angeles Police Department – from her grandfather Roy Wyche, who was beaten so badly in 1974 that he sustained permanent brain damage, to her father who suffered severe injuries after being wrongly suspected of a crime in 1983. These stories, she argues, are common occurrences that are part of a long history of injustice and systemic racism that Black people continue to face in the present day.

Black Men in Higher Education Discuss the Impact of Police Brutality, Protest, and the Coronavirus Pandemic on Black Boys and Men

2021 ◽  
pp. 54-72
Author(s):  
Sean T. Coleman ◽  
Julius L. Davis ◽  
Clyde Doughty, Jr.
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Black Men ◽  
Black Community ◽  
White Male ◽  
Police Brutality ◽  
Male Population ◽  
History Of ◽  
Critical Components ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
The Impact

Police brutality has a long history of causing havoc in the Black community. The impact of police brutality on Black men has been intensified during the coronavirus pandemic when the world witnessed George Floyd's murder on video by a white male police officer. This state of affairs caused international outrage and protest that has highlighted how Black men have been disproportionately impacted by police brutality and placed at risk for contracting COVID-19. As university professors and administrators, the authors are constantly concerned about how police brutality impacts Black men under their tutelage on a college campus. The authors argue what must be addressed is the never-ending racial pandemic continues to plague the Black community, especially men. Higher education environments are critical components of the Black community, especially in producing an educated Black male population. This chapter offers solutions to support Black males against the racial pandemic.

Psychology and Black Liberation in Richard Wright’s Black Power (1954)

2018 ◽  
pp. 198-210
Author(s):  
Dorothy Stringer
Keyword(s):  
Black People ◽  
Richard Wright ◽  
Historical Trauma ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Freudian Psychoanalysis ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Psychic Life ◽  
Travel Writings ◽  
Black Resistance ◽  
History Of

In his travel writings on the Gold Coast/Ghana, Richard Wright drew on two psychological theories—Freudian psychoanalysis and the implicit psychology of African American literary tradition—to describe the relationships among colonialism, state power, racial identity and psychic life. Dorothy Stringer’s essay notes that while Wright’s rationalism and belief in modern progress often prompted him to question, and even condemn, the local cultures and political systems he encountered, his emphasis on actual and historical trauma (above all the traumas of the slave trade) also allowed him to understand daily life, quotidian relationships and minor economic transactions as political in nature, as continuous with a broad history of black resistance, and as tools for projecting a different future for black people.

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